What I Am

One of my jobs around the house is to load and run the dishwasher. I believe I do this job very successfully. The other day, I loaded both racks, top and bottom, according to a special method that I have. Then I turned the machine on. As a result of some mishap, during the wash cycle a number of the dishes were broken, including a serving dish with a pattern of leaves and olives which my wife had particularly liked. While unloading the dishwasher, she discovered the breakage, and she brought the pieces of the dish to show me. I expressed sympathy and then began to describe my method of dishwasher loading. This did not make much headway with her, because she disagrees with my method and in fact has asked me several times not to use it. I kept trying to explain, and in the course of the discussion just for a second she lost control and said something hurtful and unkind. I will not go into details, except to say that she referred to me as an “idiot” (quotation marks mine).

O.K.; point taken. Based on some of the things I do and their consequences, her characterization of me is not inaccurate, as far as it goes. What I object to isn’t so much that as the terminology employed. Quite simply, “idiot” is not a nice word to call somebody, and I find myself asking, as Mr. Welch did of Senator Joseph McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” Throughout my life, I have had to struggle to keep from thinking of myself in the limiting way that word implies. So, for the record, I would like it known that I am not an “idiot.” I am a person who suffers from idiocy. Nobody knows what it is like to deal with crippling bouts of idiocy while trying to lead a normal life. The last thing I need is for somebody to make it harder by pointing out what an “idiot” I am.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: One day in December, I drove my wife to the bus stop. Before we got in the car, she gave me a greeting card for the cleaning people. I was to drop her off, go to the A.T.M., take out some cash, put it in the envelope with the card, and give it as a holiday thank-you to the cleaning people. I did not want the card rattling around in the front with me, so I opened the back door and laid the card in the middle of the back. The back seats had been folded down, and I put the card as far as possible from any crack it might slip into as a result of a swerve or a sudden stop.

While we were driving, my wife asked me for the card. She wanted to write a little note to the cleaning people and sign it. I told her the card was in the back. She turned around and saw it there. She undid her seat belt, crawled over her seat, and stretched out to reach it. She couldn’t quite get to it, though, and she had to crawl even farther, until only her feet were in the passenger seat. She grabbed the card and then eventually was able to slide back over the seat. Her clothes had become mussed, and I could tell that she was making an effort not to say what she thought.

Now, was it “idiotic” (her word, unspoken) of me to put the card in the back, equidistant from hazardous cracks? Well, yes—and no. I believe I could argue both sides of this question, and convince you of the justice of either one. But I’m afraid that would only help to make my wife’s larger point. Nobody but a moron, in other words, would even think about such idiotic topics. So I have decided that the wiser course is to drop the matter entirely.

By coincidence, just now I heard my wife downstairs reloading the dishwasher that I filled with breakfast and lunch dishes not half an hour ago. There were the sounds of dishes clattering and my wife shouting, “No! No! No!”

It’s sad that my own wife has been taken in by the many misconceptions associated with people like me. Those of us unfortunate enough to be afflicted with idiocy are not grotesque caricatures or figures of fun. Idiocy can strike anybody, from the man who says he cleaned your chimney to the President of the United States. Very few of us conform to the old stereotype of the guy in the dunce cap sticking his finger in a light socket. (My wife notes, just parenthetically, that I did stick my finger in a light socket once.) Recently, I was reading a book by Dostoyevsky that I thought dealt with some of these issues in a sensitive way. It’s called “The Idiocy Sufferer,” and I am happy to report that in this new translation the terms that cruelly objectify people like me have been updated more inclusively.

Of course, the story’s hero, Prince Myshkin, lived in an earlier time and so had to wash his dishes by hand. At the moment, I don’t remember whether he dried them with a dish towel or put them in a dish drainer to “air-dry.” For people with our disorder, the drying phase seems to be the problematic one. Do you know what a garlic press is? (When telling this story, I’ve found it is always a good idea to ask.) A garlic press is a device that squeezes a clove of garlic through a grid of tiny holes. Many kitchens have one. This device is hand-operated and made of sturdy metal. You would think it could be put into a dishwasher like any similar utensil.

And that’s true; it can. With this important caveat: you must first take out any adhering garlic fibres, those which remain pressed against the back part of the grid with the holes, or in the holes themselves. The dishwasher will not remove those fibres. They’re too tightly packed against the thing, or something. And during the wash cycle the water will cause the garlic remnants to get all pasty against the metal, and then, when radiant heat bakes the dishes dry, the garlic fibres will be annealed and heat-sealed to the metal until there is virtually no way of getting them off.

My wife was standing over the sink when I came home from yoga the other day. She had the garlic press in one hand and a toothpick with a frayed end in the other. Broken toothpicks littered the counter. She was picking, scraping, and generally scrabbling at the garlic press to remove the etc., etc. She has, in fact, mentioned this garlic-press problem to me before. She looked at me with an expression I have come to call her “death ray.” I said something like “That’s right, blame the victim,” referring of course to my disorder. I see that we idiocy sufferers have much educating of the public left to do. ♦

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